In which Louis gets a comic story line that has nothing to do with anything but is entertaining, Harvey and Samantha go on a super boring road trip to Pittsburgh mixed with super boring flashbacks to Samantha’s childhood and adulthood when she had nicer fake hair, and Harold Gunderson returns!
We open on Donna, at home in Harvey’s apartment, wearing another great black dress. She gives him a packed lunch for his road trip, and they exchange I-love-you’s because they’re that couple now.
Harvey picks up Sam (on Toronto’s Pearl Street), driving an old Ford Mustang from his car club, which yes, it’s been referred to before in the show, and I’m sure there are such things, but weird random concept or what. Maybe not so random because Samantha can flashback to not one, but two bad experiences with Ford Mustangs, including the very one Harvey is driving, because Eric Caldor (ex-partner of Robert Zane’s and Samantha’s) belongs to the same car club as Harvey, and he drove the car when he and Samantha were having an affair (say what?).
The affair flashbacks reveal that Sam & Eric hung out for six months, until he wanted to leave his wife and children for her, which, according to her weird sense of morality, one doesn’t do because of the children part, so she broke it off.
The childhood flashbacks show a young teen Samantha trying to escape from an evil foster father by stealing his Mustang. She gets caught and is assigned to a new foster mother, Judy O’Brien, the one who was good to her.
In the present, Harvey wants to take the scenic route to Pittsburgh. Samantha doesn’t but gives in to his whim, then yells at him when they get a flat tire and have to wait hours for an AAA truck to rescue them. Somewhere in there, she apologizes for the evidence fabrication fiasco that got her fired from the firm, the thing she did because she doesn’t like to lose, and he says he was pissed about that because he’d promised Mike Ross he wouldn’t cross any lines, but they’re all good now. They realize they are similar to each other (zzzz), and relationships with long-estranged parents matter (more zzzz).
When they finally get to Pittsburgh, we see Samantha’s biological dad for two seconds when he opens the door to her, but their actual conversation is not shown. Instead, Sam reports to Harvey afterwards, in the damned car, that her dad didn’t know until that day that she existed, her mother died when she was two, and she’s still angry about her shitty childhood. So the point of this road trip was what, exactly?
Back in the city, Louis is alone in Harvey’s office, soaking up the atmosphere, when a prospective new client named Ted Tucker calls, looking for Harvey and wanting to meet that day. Louis decides to impersonate Harvey, which, to his mind, necessitates the wearing of an amusing wig/hairpiece (with blond highlights, yet). Donna is aghast at the sight of Louis in Harvey hair, and warns against the impersonation, but Louis just wants to feel like Harvey the winner for one lunch.
The lunch scene is funny in its over-the-top-ness, including an obsequious maitre d’, ridiculous menu items (bring us the 9 hardest things to find in Manhattan!), imperious finger snapping, and a bevy of laughing extras who crowd around Louis at the table – as one does not – to hear his silly bon mots that sound nothing like Harvey but do involve one movie quote (from A Few Good Men).
Ted Tucker wants to sign up with the firm and his new pal Harvey, so that went well, but Harold Gunderson (former law firm associate/friend of Mike Ross) is deployed to come over and arrange some paperwork, and he knows Harvey, so uh-oh.
Louis bargains with Harold to hide the truth from Tucker. Harold agrees if he can return to the law firm, though not before calling Harvey and telling him what Louis did. Harvey, still on the road, finds the story amusing. Louis ends up telling Tucker the truth, and still getting him as a client, win-win.
Alex and Katrina don’t have much to do this episode, so they become slightly involved in helping Donna find a forger for the weird duck painting Harvey’s mother did that he lost to Elliott Sempel in a previous season. Donna arranges (off-stage) for the forgery to be planted in Elliott’s office, and the original brought to her. (It’s called stealing, but nvm.) She presents it to Harvey on his return. He is touched, and calls his mom to tear up and tell her he loves her, because he’s become that guy.
Next week: Faye is still causing trouble for the firm, and Harvey faces some old adversaries.
Kim Moritsugu is a Toronto novelist and sometime TV show recapper. Her latest novel The Showrunner, available from your favourite bookseller, is a darkly humourous, suspenseful Hollywood-noir about female ambition inside the TV biz that has been called a “sophisticated, compelling, and surprisingly complex drama,” and has been optioned for development as a TV series.
Check out its book trailer here:
The Hungry Novelist 